BloggerCMS

5 Reasons for Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists / Groups

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:56:00 +0000

Because you can & it is fun
To create an easy to read web location to publish a mailing list communication
To spread information outside your group, to use the blog as a communication multiplier
easy contribution per email without a login
anonymous contribution (over comment field on the blog, sent to mailing list and pushed back as a new post to the blog

____

This is the third post of the series "combinations of blogging and mailng lists" on Qompute.net. The 2008 post "Blogger posting using Google Groups", which was basically a test, is one of the most popular on qompute. In this new series we will look into ways to combine blogging and mailing lists, the opportunities, limits and risks :

Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists - Publishing on Blogger using Google Groups (qompute.net)
Limits and Risks of Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists (Yahoo Groups / Google Groups etc) (qompute.net)
5 Reasons for Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists / Groups (this post on qompute.net))

____

Blogs are popular places. Far easier to read than forum entries or mailing lists. They are great multipliers and spreaders for information. A blog could serve as extension of a mailing list.

Reasons number 4 and 5 are most interesting.

The anonymous contribution is an interesting technique for offering anonymous blackboard postings in a corporation using blogger.com. When using a comment field with the option of anonymous or pseudonyms even the administrator accounts of blogger wouldn't be able to find out who that poster was or what computer the person used.

Read the full post on qompute.net >>> >> >

The Quest for the Ultimate Blogger Template

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Do you often browse through the templates to simply find the most suitable one? Two things are currently missing:

The definitive guide of Blogger Templates including the features (like shadow effects, round corners and transparency) and the list and description of the configurations of each template
The ultimate Blogger template which would include all potential configurations, like an aggregated template of all possible blogger.com template designer customizations

Therefore we will start the Definitive Guide of Blogger Templates as the first step to the ultimate template.

The Limits and Risks of Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists / Groups

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:06:00 +0000

This is the second post of the series "combinations of blogging and mailng lists" on qompute.net. The 2008 post "Blogger posting using Google Groups" is one of the most popular Blogger posts on qompute. In this new series we will look into ways to combine blogging and mailing lists, the opportunities, limits and risks:

Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists - Publishing on Blogger using Google Groups (qompute.net)
Limits and Risks of Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists (Yahoo Groups / Google Groups etc) (This post on qompute.net)
5 Reasons for Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists / Groups (qompute.net)

The feedback by blog readers
In order to properly offer blog readers to join the conversation, they should either
subscribe to the group or use a public email address. Or you need to enable to send comments as an email to the mailing list or group.

Side effects
There would be a minor side effect, because the comment is then sent to the group, which sends it back to the blog as a new post. Readers and commenters should be warned of this doubling effect.

Opportunity to hide name of contributors, creating an interesting possibility for anonymous postings
Of course this is also an interesting opportunity to publish posts anonymously. Thereby the comment functionality is transformed to a form for anonymous posts (or simply creating on the spot aliases).

Blogger.com for example does not offer a subject line, thereby it would automatically add the following header.

Read the full article on qompute.net >>> >> >

Publishing on Blogger using Google Groups

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:12:00 +0000

This new series explores the combinations of blogging and mailing lists. The 2008 post "Blogger posting using Google Groups" is one of the most popular Blogger posts on qompute.net. In this new series we will look at the opportunities, limits and risks:

Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists - Publishing on Blogger using Google Groups (qompute.net)
Limits and Risks of Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists (Yahoo Groups / Google Groups etc) (qompute.net)
5 Reasons for Combining Blogs and Mailing Lists / Groups (qompute.net)

The first question is, does it work? Yes of course. Here is how..
Blogger.com allows posting over email using an address convention like: googleaccountname1."secretwords"@blogger.com (seel below)

Read the full article on qompute.net >>>

Inklings of the new Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:45:00 +0000

If you use http://draft.blogger.com instead of blogger.com you will have experienced the new much-improved blogger.com dashboard design.

The improvements are a much nicer interface which is also much more usable and user friendly.

With the launch of Google Plus rumors spread that blogger.com will be far better integrated into the Google services and might even be renamed to Google Blogs. If this move adds new features and usability to Blogger we are all for it. And name-wise, please Google, do as you wish as long a this does not imply degrading functionality of blogger :-)

We can't wait.

BTW check out tickerTXT.org for invites to Google Plus.

More than 100 blogs per user

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:24:00 +0000

When invited by another user to a blog, Blogger.com doesn't invoke the 100 blog limit. Therefore:
Use a different Google ID or Google Apps ID to create a new blogger.com blog
Then invite the user ID which has hit the limit of blogs and make that user administrator once you have accepted the invitation

Tip: best use different browsers so you won't have to switch the ID back and forth

Why?

Blogger.com limits the number of blogs per user to 100. As many heavy blogger users, we create blogs for every project, many remain "private". We also create a lot of "blogs" as prototypes and we like to keep many prototypes as design archives and ideas for templates.

So hitting the ceiling of 100 blogs is not as crazy and rare as you might think. I hate wasting time to click through those archived blogs in order to delete some and make room for others. We try not to claim catchy blogspot URLs, we use cryptic ones like http://ttxt-design-02.blogspot.com/.

[I was recently asked by a blogger, if I still needed a particular old blogspot domain. Since that was not the case, I handed this over to him by first removing all old posts and then inviting him as administrator. Then we removed my name as admin "et voilà", the old defunct blogspot blog had a new owner.]

Blog Title & Description- Surprising Hidden Font Attributes

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Did you know, that you can play with HTML tags to render part or the entire title and description of your blog in

italic <i></i>
bold <b></b>
big <big></big>
small <small></small>
large <large></large>
Line break <br>
...

Here is the example code for the titletags.blogspot.com :

TitleTitle & Description <br><i>using</i> HTML <big>Tags</big>
DescriptionThis is <b>bold</b><br>
That's <i>italic</i><br>
All of the above <b><i>bolditalic</i></b><br>
This is <big>big</big><br>
That's <small>small</small><br>
Did you notice the line breaks :-)

You can add the tags either in Settings - Basic

Or in Design - Page Elements and edit the Header element:

Well, now you know. Have fun.
BTW, (at least using draft.blogger.com), you can now use a lot of new fonts in the template designer... Great stuff.

Blogger.com wishlist - common requests categorised and described

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Blogger.com is an essential tool for us. Therefore I took the time to read all current 750 plus ideas and requests. And I found many recurring themes often using different words and ways to describe very similar functions or features. This post tries to filter and describe the most common requests and ideas.

The following list is not a thorough aggregation of topics. Some categories might better be embedded in others. The list is not "in order" or implies a ranking. The numbers are for reference only...

BTW if you like my Ideas for Blogger.com compilation please don't forget to vote here!

favicon - possibility to upload / create / link to different favicon (the tiny icon to the left of the URL address field in the browser. The favicon is also used for browser tabs and RSS readers)
Comment features

threaded comments / reply to comment
integration with other "social" commenting services like Facebook, Twitter, Disqus
some would like a discreet comment function which allows readers to use the comment as contact form
Look and Feel - ability to place form above comments, ability to change the display format
Integration of Google Groups as a forum (and vice versa why not use blogger as the Google Groups front-end for appearance. Also why not syndicate posts as well, IE offer the possibility in a Google Thread to publish contents as a blog post)
rating of comments - similar to youtube?
avoid accidental duplication by commenter (happens to everyone, hitting submit twice :-))
allow editing of comments (maybe transparently to user/visitor with email notification for typos, links etc)
email notification for commenter when reply has been posted

My Profile

adapting it to blog content and purpose, for example personal and business or theme of blog.
Optionally combine the Blogger Profile with the Google Profile

Handling and Appearance of Photos

more size and placement options
incl shadow and border independantly of template scheme.
Uploading and management of pics with less restrictions, better photo URLs and tighter integration with Picasa.
Handling of links to zoom the image as well as link to related content (external URL)
some would like to disable downloading (we do not agree, at least this shouldn't be a priority, as photos in a blog are public, so workarounds of downloading prevention measures are easy to do)

Social Following / Linking

Make it possible to add other service icons to the bottom of the blog
stats of links
Friend Connect and Followers
better integration with Feedburner and RSS tools, visible backlinks etc...
more visitor (social) participation - for tags, thumbs up or down, grading and rating....

Post dashboard / post editor

dashboard for management of posts should be centralised / aggregated for all blogs of a user (and among blogger communities)
integration with Google Docs / Google Apps for contributors (who won't need the blogger dashboard) that would allow for photo handling, tables, word count, mathematical formulas, table of contents / anchor links within the post etc
some would like a Latex integration (more requests, than one would assume :-))

Sharing labels / tags

across blogs, twitter, Facebook, Google Docs / Apps (posting docs as blogger articles with labels)
Email labels, so that Mail2Blogger can include tags, myabe in the posterous way with double-brackets in the subject line ((tags: news, fun))

Additional Access Level - add authors to a post which would be similar to an additional generic "editor" access.
Better blog syndication - many bloggers have more than one blog, many blogs have more than one author. Many bloggers would like easier and better handling

such as cross-posting - allow simultaneous posting to more than one blog with ONE post. That kind of cross-posting is frequent for official Google blogs.
Optionally set one blog as the main post, the other posts are referring posts with link.
Commenting should be syndicated as well (see comments above).
Very important - the cross-post should be editable as ONE post, no need to edit all posts individually.
Posting management - central management incl integration with Google Apps / Doc would allow easier access for contributors who don't need . And of course it would be nice to include at least a generic editor level (per post as well as per blog, see above)
Style management for corporate blogs - again a case for a Google Apps integration
Syndication / forwarding with external services - Ping.fm functionality, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr posting, Apple Apps Store, Android appstore
Multi-lingual support for posts published in different languages (again Google Docs plus sticky label for each language used)
Google Wave-like features (again, best through Google Docs/ Apps integration)
Google Sites - integrate wiki functionality into Blogger (maybe Google Docs Wiki) , and Blogger into Google Sites regarding blog capabilities
PubSubHubbub feature
being able to mix private and public posts in a blog

more font options (editor, CSS)
CSS and template designer

make templates "savable" , so that additional 3rd party templates or the users customisations don't get lost
background image handling not just for upload images, including URL for external hosting
saving customisations without having to apply them to the blog
improve template header options for fonts and photos, size, position, width...
CSS options like transparency and colour options for ALL page elements
reusable color schemes for different templates, applying pre-configured color scheme to a template
possibility to add background images to share with others
possibility to share designs / layouts / templates

additional mobile templates

each template has a separate simpler mobile look
mobile CSS settings / handling

table handling

maybe button for adding tables, a table wizard (though a tighter integration with Google Docs / Apps would solve that issue)

Search Engine Optimisation SEO

maybe through META gadget
label integration as keywords
better page rank features (ironically a common remarkt is that Google's blogger is less SEO friendly than Wordpress.com, therefore Blogger.com blogs are less well indexed and ranked in searches)

Navbar features - Blogger's navbar (not the menu navigation for pages)

more options for themes of blogs regarding next blog etc
some would like to make it disappear (there are easy hacks, but...)
some would like to have a mouse-over slide in

Better backup

automated download
download posts in text format (not as xml)

Print, PDF, ebook features for visitors - most commonly requested are PDF / ebook feature as a button to either load the entire blog into PDF or ebook format, or the post.
Link management

Open URL in new page - often asked and simple (though not on the list of my top requests)
Add direct link to posts / pages within the editor
Permalink option
Links from images

mobile blogger apps for iPhone, iPhone and Android (fewer requests for Blackberry)
Sticky post, featured article, recommended posts, my favorite posts, homepage and pages - we believe that this would be best provided using a gadget "selected posts" where the user can select pages and posts displayed in that gadget. Also page elements and gadgets should include a "display" condition (read this post)

manual selection
selection based on label
display options for number of posts, thumbnail, date, author, snippet length, full length of post...
slideshow option
conditional gadgets for page elements and within gadgets

Calendar gadget - there are a few, but usually pre-2010, undistinguishable (seemingly similar gadgets) and unusable

Google Calendar (allowing for Blogger adaption in theme colours, size etc)
Google Calendar to post (for example public calendar entries as event blog posts for example)
Use the Calendar layout for blog archive display option

Gadget handling

community rating (also to flag dodgy ones)
better selection interface
more options for photos, gallery (better selection options) and video gadgets (for example load playlist of youtube user)

Google Maps Gadget for imrpoved mapping features within posts as well as page element
Navigation menu bar (see my additional post)

dropdown features
more customisation by combining link list and pages..)

Labels and categories

second level labels like wordpress categories
clustering of labels by theme
let visitors add tags (for example by aggregating backlink tags, or tagging from public bookmark shares)
adding stackoverflow.com type tag features / rating and weighting tags

Gadgets within posts/ pages

would allow for sitemap on a page, or pages with label clouds,
maybe even mindmap like sitemap
Mostly useful for pages, but gallery, Google calendar (for events and bookings) and poll gadgets for posts are very useful as well.

A few notes on the new editor
Interestingly, the request section dedicated to the updated editor lists many requests which basically say, that the new editor is not as good as the old one. I disagree with those comments. My different experience is maybe due to the old editor's browser and OS dependence. I am using Ubuntu and mainly Chrome. Yes, the image options are a little less flexible, but I am sure that this will soon be fixed.

Other than the copy paste annoyance, the editor seems far more stable.

If you copy and paste within the post, the "past" includes a META tag which the editor doesn't like and complains about. Currently, the only way to fix that is to switch to the HTML mode and delete the meta tag(s). For longer texts, I use the "find and replace" of the browser.

My little bug fix wish is that default paste is parsed to plain text. Only as an option should "paste" include rich formatting.

Please check out all my idea contributions for blogger.com :-)

Blogger.com Wishlist - More Flexibility and Options for the Navigation Menu

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 07:03:00 +0000

The "Pages" and the "Link List" gadgets allow you to create a menu bar when you place those gadgets. That's a big improvement since the introduction of the new template designer, because from then on, those menu bars have been integrated into the templates. Therefore once these gadgets are "added" to your blog, you can change the look and feel of the bar itself, the "buttons" and the font.

In the context of using Blogger.com for more than "pure" blogging and to make the menu bar much more usable and flexible, here are our wishes:

combine the Pages and Link List options, so that the menu bar links can point to pages as well as configurable URLs
although technically, once that combination is possible, one could include the URL with the Label Search, for most users it would be great to include pre-configured choices, like

home (including the option to insert an image as logo on the menu bar)
pages
labels
posts
enter link URL
search element (the search field is often nicely

last but not least, drop-down menus would be great,

freely configurable or
if the top link is selected as label, the sub-menu could include up to 7 (?) laets or selected posts and the last sub-link for "more".

The drop-down element could be included as an additional "menu" element, same functionality as the normal menu bar element, just nested in to the main menu bar...

Participate in improving Blogger.com!

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 06:59:00 +0000

Google's Product Ideas Team asks for ôur wishes and requests to improve Blogger.com. They did that last year as well and, wow, a couple of months later the hibernation status of Blogger.com suddenly ended. Of course, Blogger.com always improved over time, but since early 2010 things started to change rapidly and the improvements have been huge.

So now it's "Round 2". And my biggest three wishes are

more flexibility and options to customise the menu bar (more in this follow up post)
conditional page elements, which allow to set "if" options when certain elements should be displayed. Those settings could be done on the dashboard "Page Elements" for elements and gadgets as well as within the gadgets. Such conditional page elements allow to create custom pages (including the homepage / homeUrl) as well as contextual gadgets. I described that in more detail in a previous post.
A possibility to offer 3rd party tools and services for Blogger.com like an appstore, incl checkout and licensing (default is free and open source, services can use Google checkout). That includes the ability to offer "admin" gadgets which can be selected in the same way as normal gadgets. Therefore no need to manipulate the HTML code anymore for powerusers. Those "admin" gadgets allow for example

to include code in the Head section as well as
extend the CSS default options for 3rd parties to add options (such as a URL for the background rather then uploading the image)
allow the user to save and keep templates, his own customised templates as well as 3rd party ones...

I have a lot more wishes, but those are details compared to my top 3.

Blogger.com's still lacks conditional "widgets"

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:36:00 +0000

Google's Blogger team has been quite productive since last year (2009). First the new handling of widgets, aligning this feature with iGoogle gadgets. Then little but much needed features like the menu bar for pages (or alternatively the link gadget). And of course the "read more" feature, new and improved gadgets... The biggest and most significant upgrade has been the Blogger Template Designer. With one stroke, it made our previous design tweaks to templates out-dated. Which we appreciate :-)
As of autumn 2010, the designer is a great, though unpolished, diamond. Lot's of little things which we would love to see improved.

But most of all we would like to be able to use "display conditions" for widgets / gadgets. Only show selected posts or gadgets on the homepage. Please let us select when to display gadgets, they don't need to be on every page or post. This would also make it so much easier to display "featured posts or articles" on the homepage. Ie, it'll be great to indicate if a gadget should be shown:

"only/not on homepage"
"only/not for posts which have the label/tag/filter 'ABC'"
"only/not on pages"
"only/not on page 'XYZ'"

Additionally, those display conditions would be great to combine with layout areas of the "Page Elements". IE, "only display the right sidebar if..."

We have of course tried to include those conditions when creating our own gadgets. But Blogger seems to parse the code and ignore those <b> conditions within widgets / gadgets.

Amanda Kennedy has posted a nice and relatively simple tweak on her BloggerBuster. Of course, one "problem remains". If you change your template in the new designer, you will loose all tweaks which are not "within" blogger elements such as those gadgets.

Migrating an "old" blogger.com site to use the new "template designer"

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:23:00 +0000

Before starting to change your "old" blogger.com site, test the new blogger templates using especially created blogs. Blogger.com allows up to 100 blogs per user, so you have plenty of potential test-sites to create :-) . Import the texts from your "normal" site and play with colours and backgrounds. It is a "trial and error" -iterative- process. Many template variants are not as different as they seem. Once you apply your future website's intended look and layout, the differences are small but important. For example, the corners of the content "boxes" of the "grey green" Awesome Inc. template are rounded, whereas the pure grey one has edges. The navigation menu for the pages is transparent with some, appears 3-dimensional with other Awesome Inc. templates.

For tickertxt.org we chose the grey-green-menu Awesome Inc Template by Tina Chen as the basic design. We wanted our site to look a little fresher spending as little time as possible. So here is what we did within a couple of hours:

Select the template - we used the Awesome Inc with the green navigation menu for the blogger pages. Reasons were the nice menu bar and the round border corners of the post section.
Background Image - we chose the same image as with our old template and uploaded it to the designer. We like the image to stay "in place" when the blog is scrolled, therefore we un-selected the tickbox "scroll with page" which appears next to the thumbnail of your background image after the successful upload.
Layout Section - we chose the single column layout, kept the 2-column footer and adjusted the width to 770px

The Advanced Layout changes are numerous, therefore here is the list of all changes:

Page - set the font to Verdana
Links - colours to #bf9000 only the hover link is lighter #f1c232
Blog Title / Blog Description - our logo in the header is set to replace the Blog title and description, we set the font to courier and to the link colours, even though nobody will see that.
Tabs Text - Courier 14px bold, text colour #333333, selected text colour #f1c232
Tabs Background - #f1c232 inactive / #bf9000 active (current page) / border transparent
Date Header - Verdana 10px, #666666, border #bf9000
Post Title - Courier, 20px, #bf9000
Post Background - #fefdfa (unchanged), border and bevel colour set to #bf9000
Gadget Title - set to Courier, else unchanged
Gadget Text - verdana, 12 px else unchanged
Gadget Links - same as normal links ie colours to #bf9000 only the hover link is lighter #f1c232
Gadget Background - colour #333333, other settings transparent
Sidebar Background - transparent (unchanged)
Images - default / unchanged
Feeds - default / unchanged
Feed Links - same as normal links ie colours to #bf9000 only the hover link is lighter #f1c232
Pager - #cac4a9
Footer - background #333333 text #cabf88

Further changes

Added Page Link gadget
Added Pages (about / contact / ...)
Edited the previously linked pages for "about" and "contacts" which were normal blog posts. Changed them to draft versions as the new pages replace those posts.
Added a HTML gadget with the Google Presentation code. The trick is to move it to the top of the "posts-section" in the Design Layout by dragging and dropping it with the mouse. That way the slides are always positioned on top of the post list, as if we used a "featured" gadget (which does not yet exist)

Planned changes using the Advanced CSS (see this post for a how to)

The bottom attribution gadget will be replaced by a more generic footer text and links. Of course the credits of the attribution will be included.
The footer background might be transformed into dark grey transparent. maybe the gadget background as well.
The Blogger navbar might be changed to a "hover-in" stle rather than the "always-on" state.

History of the site and reasons for the migration
Early 2010 we re-designed tickerTXT.org for a more "corporate" look and feel. To do that we heavily modified a blogger template called Nexus-5. We published those mods as the free-bee-template. We learned a lot about blogger.com.
Then Google released the new template designer to draft.blogger.com users in spring and to normal users in the summer 2010. And overnight our template was outdated and incompatible with the new designer. But we are not complaining, the new features are great. We left our design as it was until we needed to turn a bit more blog style. So it was time to "re-create" an improved version of the design using a new blogger template.

This article is a qompute.net cross-post.

1-2-3 the simplest way to push weird stuff into Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:39:00 +0000

Sorry for that sensational post title. But I just tried to paste a simple CSS code into Blogger.com and i always returned HTML errors and didn't want to publish the post, even when I selected the post option to "interpret HTM literally".

So I googled quite a bit, tried a couple of tricks, but none seemed to work and i begin to think it might be a bug. Google is changing a lot of it's services recently, so maybe it's temporarily.

I remembered an old trick: when the web based editors don't seem to work, try emailing the stuff. And bingo, I wrote the post in Gmail and sent it to the email-post addresses defined in the Settings - Email & Mobile:

And bingo. Email to Blogger is a simple and effective parser. Now that Gmail has these nice media features, I guess that Gmail will become my future Blogger Editor. And that also allows me easily cross-post the same article on different blogs.

One item on my todo list: check, if tags (or labels as Google calls them), can be defined in an email.

Oh and dear Google, will you bring back the "publish to blog" feature in Google Documents? Please.

1-2-3 the simplest way to turn Blogger.com into a normal Website CMS

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:13:00 +0000

Go to your blogger.com dashboard and click on "design" below your blog.

Design Section - Page Elements: get rid of all typical blog gadgets, like "followers", "About Me" etc (in the right column for most blog templates)
Design Section - Page Elements: unselect all typical blog feature when editing the "Blog Posts" section
Design Section - Template Designer - Advanced - Add CSS: insert the following code...

.navbar {display: none;}

.Attribution {display:none;}

.blog-pager {display:none;}

.blog-feeds {display:none;}

.post-footer {display:none;}

Et voilà. If you then create the page gadget below your title header, you'll have a horizontal navigation menu. regarding the .Attribution, we recommend to add a text gadget as footer and include the copyright and also mention what template you are using and maybe your modifications. We often do it with an archived post, to which we link fron the footer. ie

CC 2006-2010 qompute.net | Impressum & Disclaimer | Attributions

Of course it is always useful to get a backup XML when you have configured and finalised your template-designer modifications by downloading the entire code (Design Section - Edit HTML).

Here is a recent example of a site I did for a friend http://www.exbuero.com. The site is published, but will probably change a lot over time.

have fun

This is a cross-post with qompute.net

Using the new template designer for Blogger as a CMS

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:56:00 +0000

Blogger.com is undergoing significant design and feature upgrades. The new template designer is fantastic and promises even more great improvements to be released soon. Those incremental releases are to be found when switching to the "blogger in draft" mode and may only be available in English US.
Time for us to test the CMS capabilities and our project is a classic corporate website, which until recently had been hosted as a typical set of static html pages.

As the original hosting service ceased to exist, we retrieved the original design and content from archive.org. The mission was to re-create the original site faithfully, though practical changes and alterations to adapt the design to Blogger were permitted.

Rather than our own BeeCMS template, we used the new "Simple" template by Josh Peterson (an option in the new template designer) as the source for the CSS tweaks on our testsite SELLDO ARTIFACTS .

check out selldoartifacts.blogspot.com

We made a few design and colour changes to the template using the new and very nice graphical interface of the blogger template designer. We copied all the texts from the original site. Because it is clear that the template designer will get a few more options and functionalities, we decided if possible to avoid all manipulation of the HTML source. And we succeeded. Whereas with BeeCMS we heavily modified the Blogger template html , this time we limited our tweaks to CSS declarations in the designer and a few tricks.

check out seldomartifacts.blogspot.com

So here is what we have declared in the free form CSS field:

.navbar {
display: none;
}

.header-inner .widget {
text-align: center;
}

.fauxborder-left {
position:center;
}

.tabs-inner .widget ul {
border-bottom:0px;
}

.tabs-inner .section:first-child ul {
border-top:0px;
}

./ .content-inner {
padding: 0px;
}
/.

.feed-links {
display:none;
}
.blog-pager {
display:none;
}
.Attribution {
display:none;
}

.foot {
text-align: center;
font-size: 80%;
}

By just copying and pasting the any of the above CSS declarations in the template designer, you immediately see the changes they cause. So test them. If you find other interesting declararations, please fell free to leave them in the comments :-)

Here are some examples we played with:

selldoartifacts.blogspot.com
seldomartifacts.blogspot.com
moritzschroedercom.blogspot.com

DoTemplate generator now for Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:32:00 +0000

--------
important UPDATE
The new Template Designer of Blogger.com offers many, if not more features than described in the post below. We haven't checked out what doTemplate has become since the introduction of the new Blogger.com design features in Spring 2010. Therefore we recommend to first explore the Blogger Template Designer and then compare it to doTemplate - if you are interested. We don't see the need for that anylonger...
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via dotemplate.com

This web based template generation service is looking quite sleek and professional. Emphasis is on visual tools and ease of use. It is maybe not for the absolute beginner, but certainly quite intuitive.
And of course I only mention it because they claim to be able to generate blogger templates as an option. Beta at this stage, but certainly worth a trial :-)

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Trix Template Generator for Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:23:00 +0000

--------

important UPDATE

The new Template Designer of Blogger.com offers many, if not more features than described in the post below. We haven't checked out what trix has become since the introduction of the new Blogger.com design features in Spring 2010. Therefore we recommend to first explore the Blogger Template Designer and then compare it to trix - if you still are interested...

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Another template Generator, this time maybe one for the more initiated. Whats interesting is that it provides a preview of the blogger look in the background.

Trix is basically allowing to configure all CSS Blogger elements including padding, margins etc . Trix then generates the html/css XML code. All you need then is to upload or paste the code into your blogger website.

Advantage is that you really can finetune your design to the last pixel. You also can of course reload your previous trix generated templates. As a registered user you can even store your designs on trix, currently limited to 6.

Less sleek and chic than dotemplate, but ultimately more configurable.

great stuff :-)

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Content Management using Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:49:00 +0000

Blogger.com is a free website hosting service of Google intended to offer a home for Bloggers. Blogger has become a powerful and versatile tool with very few restrictions. If you want free hosting, a possibility to maintain the site as a team and to enjoy the possibility of AJAX & Co Blogger is there for you.

At BloggerCMS we want to help to build a site which is not primarily a blogsite. We help you using blogger as a content management system - the CMS in our name :-)

1-2-3 | Google Analytics for Blogger.com (via blog.dirkeinecke.de)

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:44:00 +0000

--------

important UPDATE

Since Spring 2010 Blogger has introduced "Stats" on the Admin interface for blogs. Google Analytics of course offers far more data and in-depth analysis, but for most users, the basic "Stats" information may be sufficient. The nice workaround by Dirk Einecke though is still working if you want to paste the Google Analytics code into you websites HTML...

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via blog.dirkeinecke.de

Best practice for Bloggers to paste the Google Analytics Code into your blogspot site.

Open the blogger admin
got to Layout - Site Elements
Create a new gadget, best at the bottom of the site elements
Select HTML/Javascript as the type of widget
DO NOT give a title because then visitors will see nothing of your gadget containing your Google Analytics code. Repeat, leave the title EMPTY!

That should be it, Google usually takes a bit of time to start tracking. Wait a day or so.
Happy go lucky.

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Growmedia.ca's stunning and inspiring website

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:19:00 +0000

...with a fixed background image. Well I don't want to go into details, here is the link to their website explaining what they did, and how to do it including the full javascript. Just open it and scroll. We at tickerTXT / Cidentigo will certainly try the suggested code in combination with blogger templates. This is also the kind of inspiration for the website relaunch of tickerTXT (now quite overdue) we have been looking for.

BeeCMS template, version 0.98g is basically ready for production and download, with that kind of background handling described by Growmedia.ca, we can turn BeeCMS into something like QueenBeeCMS :-)

BTW Canadian Growmedia has also other great articles describing other very useful javascripts such as their Gallery code mix and some great tips for website projects. Have a look and enjoy. And thanks to Grow. for

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YES - Startpage / HompageURL filtered by Label for Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:33:00 +0000

As Blake Matheny remarked in his post in 2007, most Blogger Help Forum entries and responses for requests to filter the default hompage list of posts by a Label state it there is no solution. But Blake has found and described a solution, which we applied line-by-line, with a little twist: we just left the original Google code section about the rendering of posts as it is, including the now standard lines for the eventual inclusion of Google ads. And it works, we haven't found an issue yet, cross fingers :-)

Our new revised code including our version of Blake's hack: the main difference is as mentioned above the tags for Google Ads, and the positioning of the "includable", Although we intially pasted it somewhere else Google / Blogger, seemed to re-adjust the location of that code.

So here is the new code:

First the Includable 'printPosts' which can be found between the "post-feed links" section and the includable "feedLinksBody". The formel within the includable printposts is the default Google call to list posts and individual posts (items) with or without comments.

<b:includable id='printPosts' var='post'>

<li><article class='hentry'>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<section>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</section>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>

<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>

<data:defaultAdEnd/>

<b:else/>

<data:adEnd/>

</b:if>

<div class='inline-ad'>

<data:adCode/>

</div>

<data:adStart/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>

<data:post.latencyJs/>

</b:if>

</article></li>

</b:includable>

And here is the original hack by Blake:

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

<data:defaultAdStart/>

<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>

<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>

<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>

<b:if cond='data:label.name == "home"'>

<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>

</b:if>

</b:loop>

</b:if>

<b:else/>

<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>

</b:if>

</b:loop>

</ol>

<data:adEnd/>

...

And here is the former BeeCMS code for comparison (which had already been modified from the original code, see previous posts).

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

<data:defaultAdStart/>

<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<li><article class='hentry'>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<section>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</section>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>

<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>

<data:defaultAdEnd/>

<b:else/>

<data:adEnd/>

</b:if>

<div class='inline-ad'>

<data:adCode/>

</div>

<data:adStart/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>

<data:post.latencyJs/>

</b:if>

</article></li>

</b:loop>

</ol>

<data:adEnd/>

It worked: the default 'homepage' is now filtering the posts using the label "home" (I hope after posting this article, the 'home' in the code remains bold and red :-) ). Thanks Blake.

If you want to publish an article on the first page / start page, just add the label "home" to that post. And don't forget, Blogger doesn't display the post, if you spelled the tag "Home" or "HOME" instead of "home". Yeah, it is a bit nick-picking of Blogger to make such a distinction for labels...

So all remained for us was now to remove the #featured section, the Javascripts etc, which had become obsolete. Also we don't need the original hack anylonger, which wrapped an "if else /if" around "featured" and the "main" sections of the template.

So only major todo which remains is the bottom of the page, where we would like to update the "bio" section to make it expandable / collapsible . Don't know whether to use AJAX / Javascript, maybe using an invisible tabbed box (where the initial tab is empty, thereby "collapsed", or whether to us DHTML... We'll see, for now the biggest roadworks to adapt Nexus 5 to a more classic website style use with CMS-like publishing capabilities. Stay tuned :-)

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Download now or preview on posterous

BeeCMS -095e-templateforbloggercom.xml (46 KB)

Switching from "Featured" to "homeurl" filtered by a Label

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:03:00 +0000

As described in a previous post, we want to have a "homepage" or "startpage" which lists only selected posts.

In our current version, we use the #featured functionality of Amanda's Nexus 5. We have modified it a little bit and removed all the text length limitations and therefore we have suppressed the "continue reading" link. But the layout limitations remain.

We then have the If else hack, which basically says, if it's the "homeURL", then show the #featured section, else show main.

It is of course possible to get rid of all the layout limitations - by using the normal "posts" call of blogger. And we found Blake Matheny's way to include labels as filters for the homeURL.

So in this part we want to prepare BeeCMS code to be able to then integrate Blake's hack.

Revisiting the Nexus code we found that Amanda merged the Smashing Magazine suggestions with Blogger.com calls by introducing a new "if". Smashing's Enrique Ramirez suggest using the "ol" tag when listing the posts.

The blogger call for listing posts is however wrapped in a "Includable". in Nexus 5 Amanda simply used the default Blogger code by wrapping it in an if script, which basically says, if the page is not an "item", then use we use the default html code with an "ol"-tag, if it is a single post then use the normal div-tag.

The only difference is that in the CSS the ol tag has a few definitions for margins, so for now we decided to simplify things.

We just use the ol-tag whether it is the type "item" (or single post) or not.

Once everything is ok, we'll try to integrate Blake's code.

So here's the Nexus original code:

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

<data:defaultAdStart/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>

<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<li><article class='hentry'>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<section>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</section>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>

<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>

<data:defaultAdEnd/>

<b:else/>

<data:adEnd/>

</b:if>

<div class='inline-ad'>

<data:adCode/>

</div>

<data:adStart/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>

<data:post.latencyJs/>

</b:if>

</article></li>

</b:loop>

</ol>

<b:else/>

<div class='hfeed' id='posts-list-item'>

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<article class='hentry'>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>

<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>

<data:defaultAdEnd/>

<b:else/>

<data:adEnd/>

</b:if>

<div class='inline-ad'>

<data:adCode/>

</div>

<data:adStart/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>

<data:post.latencyJs/>

</b:if>

</article>

</b:loop>

</div>

</b:if>

And here is our new (old) replacement, whereby we simply always use the ol-tag:

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>

<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>

<data:defaultAdStart/>

<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

<li><article class='hentry'>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<section>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</section>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>

<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>

<data:defaultAdEnd/>

<b:else/>

<data:adEnd/>

</b:if>

<div class='inline-ad'>

<data:adCode/>

</div>

<data:adStart/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>

<data:post.latencyJs/>

</b:if>

</article></li>

</b:loop>

</ol>

<data:adEnd/>

We have subsequently removed all "posts-list-item" CSS declarations. the less declarations, the better :-)

Now remains the last part, the merging with Blake's code... can't wait, but I have to :-(

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Removed the post summaries

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:25:00 +0000

Download now or preview on posterous

BeeCMS-v09c-templateforblogger.xml (50 KB)

Following our quest to debloggedize the BeeCMS template based we removed this blocj of code, which Amanda used to list the post summaries.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>

<div expr:id='"summary" + data:post.id'>

<data:post.body/>

</div>

<script type='text/javascript'>createSummaryAndThumb("summary<data:post.id/>");

</script>

<span class='rmlink' style='float:right; margin-right: 1px;'> Continue reading »</span>

<div style='clear: both;'/>

</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<div class='post-body entry-content'>

<data:post.body/>

<div style='clear: both;'/>

</div>

</b:if>

We replaced it with the standard Blogger way to handle post lists. As we use the lists only to generate dynamic content for the labelled navigation menu items, we prefer the direct full version of the post:

<div class='post-body entry-content'>

<data:post.body/>

<div style='clear: both;'/>

</div>

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Revisiting the homepage issue with Blogger.com

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:22:00 +0000

We have been debating how to achieve the goal to produce a homepage like first page of blogger. And there are a variety of solutions, trickes and hacks:

First trick - The Easy Peasy Way with Flaws

Reduce the number of posts to 1 (or very few) in the Layouts section of Blogger, the editing the Blog posts box. Then in order to have one post permanetly there, like a sticky thread or entry in a forum, just change the date stamp to some far away date in the future AFTER having already published the article. Nice but hhmmm.

Feasible without coding using just about any Blogger.com template, including the 3rd party ones

Second solution - Neat and tidy, though a little too constrained for the user

The next trick which we are using at the moment I am writing this is the "Featured" hack that Amanda's Nexus 5 is using. We have morphed Nexus 5 into BeeCMS and with a clever if then else hack, the posts simply disappear from the homepage, only the Feutured section (renamed "Welcome") can now bee seen when using this new template.

There is a catch though, the article uses a javascript, which "reads" out the post with such a label, but... all the layout options get parsed - just the text remains. For a "Welcome" message this may work fine if it weren't for another restriction: pictures need to be declared as well, ie, only one photo will be shown as a kind of preview.

So we though about removing most of the text and layout restriction restrictions, but it is still not enough.

Trying to filter the hompage posts with a label

This is now on our todo list. Most posts and Blogger forums / groups findings say, nay, forget it. Use a workaround. Then I struck gold. I haven't yet tested the hack, but it looks good,

We have another major re-design to do, we don't want to use the "read more" feature of post listings by deafult. Blogger has recently introduced the option to manually split the post using a button in the editor. And for a CMS-like website, this makes much more sense than listing summaries.

So we will reintroduce the normal Blogger code for the main posts, removing all the featured and post summary scripts... and then we'll try to test this hack by Blake Matheny. Or... maybe we'll find more hacks :-) Can't wait.

So as a reminder here are Blake's hacks:

First, search for the line that starts with <b:includable id='main' var='top'>. You are going to remove everything in that function between <b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'> and the closing tag with the following:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>

<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>

<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>

<b:if cond='data:label.name == "main"'>

<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>

</b:if>

</b:loop>

</b:if>

<b:else/>

<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>

</b:if>

The above change essentially says the following: if you are on the homepage, and a post has labels, and the post has the "main" label, then call printPosts. Or, if you are not on the homepage, call printPosts. Now search for the close tag of the main function (it looks like</b:includable>) and after it paste the following code:

<b:includable id='printPosts' var='post'>

<b:if cond='data:post.dateHeader'>

<h2 class='date-header'><data:post.dateHeader/></h2>

</b:if>

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>

</b:if>

</b:includable

The above code is your printPosts function/method. It is identical to what you had before, it was just turned into a function to reduce code duplication. That's it. Now only posts with a "main" label will show up on the front page. [...] To filter out content, just change the (== "main") markup to something like (!= "nsfw").

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Deleted and moved the 'footer' post-info paragraphes.

noreply@blogger.com (Moritz Schroeder) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:36:00 +0000

Deleted the following code (parsed)

<footer class='post-info'>

<!--

<abbr class='published'>

<b:if cond='data:post.dateHeader'>

<data:post.dateHeader/>

</b:if>

</abbr>

<address class='vcard author'>

By <a class='url fn' href='#'><data:post.author/></a>

</address>

-->

</footer>

(here is the same code plain)

<footer class='post-info'>

<!--

<abbr class='published'>

<b:if cond='data:post.dateHeader'>

<data:post.dateHeader/>

</b:if>

</abbr>

<address class='vcard author'>

By

</address>

-->

</footer>

We moved the post.dateHeader part to the section class='footer'.

Reasoning, Author names usually are not used in classic website styles. Therefore the "post" has been moved left as well.

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